PalenqueBob

i'm not sure postage due has been avbolished but i have not heard of it in a while

in theory letters, card, etc. with not enough postage were delivered only after the recipient got a postage due notice in the box and left the appropriate money or even had to go to the post office - this i guess is why international mail must have stamps on it with the value indicated - not some generic first-class rate stamp forever whose exact value cannot be determined

But i believe it's just too much hassle for p.o. to do this anymore - would cost more to process than take in - so i really don't know status of postage due.

I can't believe anyone intentionally would have recipients have to pay for postage!

GSteed

Go to your local (foreign) post office and inquire. Show the clerk your card, note AIR MAIL and USA...ask for X f stamps. Use your fingers if necessary to denote quantity. Surface mail is available but it may take months. Ensure delivery, supply legible addresses. Pre-printed addresses are best. I have seen piles of mail alongside postal workers trying to decipher addresses!

hopingtotravel

I always take typed labels w/me.

luvtotravel

Mailing postcards got too expensive for my long list so I send a few, but many of my friends get email postcards. In advance of my trip I go to www.webshots.com to select the photos I want to send, write down where they are so I can find them again, and send my "virtual" postcards from an internet cafe overseas. It is possible to add a message to the photo. And it's free!

hopscotch

I just received a picture postcard from a Dutch friend traveling in Montluçon, France. The stamp was 0,60€. That's about 83 cents USA right now.

BTW, food, wine, and cheese are reported as superb.

kerouac

Postage from France to EU destinations is 0.60€.

I paid postage due just a couple of months ago. The building management company sent out all of its reports without running them through the franking machine. My neighbors and I were not amused.

Viajero2

It costed me 0.78€ to mail a postcard from Ireland to the USA (Northeast). I mailed them on Tuesday morning and my family got them by Friday. I was impressed.

quokka

<I'll take the advice about the wide spectrum of prices, and go for the lowest.>
Huh???

The price of a postcard is set by the resp. country's postal service, and that's it.

I think I should also mention that stamps are only valid for mail sent from the country where they were bought. Of course you cannot pick stamps in the US before you go, and of course you cannot use, for example, Italian stamps to send postcards from France.

PalenqueBob

When will EU get a postage system like the euro - actually still could have their own stamps but with euro pricing uniform throughout Europe in a common post office much like UPS and FedEx operate throughout the EU and let any stamps from anywhere be used.

Of course since basically would only affect tourists don't expect it soon.

kerouac

Actually, France was quite militant about postage until the last rate rise. It (and one other country, but I forgot which one) was the only country in the EU to apply the same postal rate for domestic mail and mail to any EU country (+ Switzerland which always gets special treatment it doesn't deserve). That's when a stamp cost 0.53€. When the rate rose to 0.54€ for domestic mail, it jumped to 0.60€ for the other countries of the EU (+ Switzerland).

Meanwhile, over the years, long distance mail has gone down in price. The rate to the US/Canada etc. used to be 0.90€ but it has been 0.85€ for several years now and has not budged while other rates increased.

Askar

<i>That's when a stamp cost 0.53&euro;. When the rate rose to 0.54&euro; for domestic mail, it jumped to 0.60&euro; for the other countries of the EU (+ Switzerland).</i>

When the rate rose to 0.53&euro; for domestic mail it jumped to 0.55&euro; for other countries of EU

kerouac

Oh, right -- it was when the stamp was 0.50&euro; (or whatever) that it was the same for the rest of Europe. They've got to stop changing the rates!

PalenqueBob

Jack: i've never heard of a move for a pan-European Union postal union - is there any?

merci bow cups

kerouac

No -- all of the postal systems are too different, some privatized and other still public, some with postal banks and others totally mail oriented, and still others still attached to the national telecom sector.

And of course postal services are dwindling anyway. Our biggest shock in Paris came about 5 years ago when we dropped from 3 mail deliveries a day to just 1.